The Beauty of a Beater


If holding onto a car for more than a few years makes you nervous, can you tell me why that is?  What is it that makes you feel you must trade in a perfectly good vehicle on something with a little more shine and smell of off-gassing plastics and materials (that “new car” smell)?

Are you afraid that the car will start costing you more as it ages?  Do you quake in your boots when you think about replacing a transmission or a motor?

Hear me out on this matter.  You may need to keep your clunker.  I want you to do some math before you trot over to the car lot.

Your jalopy may be saving you a bundle, even with repairs.  

To let you in on a little secret at our Castle, we are saving a bundle while we drive older and older vehicles.  I used to drive a 2001 model red Hyundai, and The Husband drove a 2000 Chevrolet.  They were mostly intact on the body.  The paint was chipping on Little Red and there were a fair amount of dents in both vehicles.

That was then.  We still have the 2001 Hyundai, and my husband is driving it.  For the sake of honesty with my readers, I was gifted a car.  The car got totaled, and my replacement car is a 2016 Hyundai, which was a replacement vehicle that only cost me the amount of the titling fee and the tags to get it.  Our cars are paid for; and accidents, not vanity, are the reasons why we have upgraded the car that I drove and my husband switched cars.

We carry liability on the 2001 Hyundai for the insurance.  Tags and such are reasonable in our state.  So what do we spend on cars for a year?

$3282.67 (2016)
$3551.14 (2017)

That was with a $1000.00+ repair bill on Little Red.  Broken down into a per month figure, that is $273.56 (2016) and $295.93 (2017) to operate and maintain two vehicles with no car payment.  That includes:

  • gas
  • insurance
  • repairs
  • tags
  • car washes
  • personal property taxes

If you are focusing in on the numbers, you will notice that $273.56 is not even an average car payment for one vehicle, let alone two, and that amount includes a host of other things that would be on top of the monthly dollar amount for some poor soul with a payment or two.  

By budgeting and tracking expenses, I can show you that it is more financially savvy for us to look smug in our beaters than look like a sucka rolling around in some flashy, debt-ridden ride.  And just so you know, if the gift of the car hadn't been given to us, we would have two beaters today, not just one.  

Think hard before you trade in what you have.  Even with a hefty repair bill or two per year it is possible to come out ahead of where you would be with a car loan.  

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